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[Parsely]

If sitting in a torture room with the men who orchestrated my delivery to said torture room I want to spit in their faces and curse them, dangit!

It only seems weird because it's never been done before to my knowledge.

Well that's no longer a complaint about the writers' ability to characterize someone well and, presumably, make him react to the situations presented in the game in a logical and rational way. The way the character would react won't always be in line with your thoughts about what best to do, but that's the nature of video games! A character who's actually supposed to be quiet (and not for arbitrary video game reasons like in Modern Warfare, where Soap is actually super talkative later once he becomes an NPC but inexplicably switches back to being totally silent once the player takes control of him again) probably isn't going to overreact under pressure if he hasn't said a word the entire game.

[Darkmere]

Blood, Shadow Warrior (at least the old one, dunno about the new), Rise of the Triad (old and new) all had voiced lines for the FPS-tagonist. Oh, and Bulletstorm!

[alexandertnt]

I like the mute character when done correctly, it helps you project yourself into the game, blurring the distinction between you and your character.

I wouldn't really consider Okami to have a mute protagonist. The protagonist emotes through body language, which is a pretty effective method of communication. Contrast that to a character like Gordon, who is effectively a floating camera.

[Rose]

Completely Mute Protagonists
Who makes no sounds excepts grunts? I mean, if you can voice-act the rest of the characters, you could at least give the protagonist a few lines.
(Mostly aimed at first-person games with set protagonists.)

Been playing Borderlands, the pre-sequel, and they /don't/ do this! I love it.

There's four characters to chose from, and they all spout one-liners and talk say stuff in general where appropriate.

[alexandertnt]

Games with audio chat enabled by default

Just fuck every game ever that does that.

[dorf]

No way to disable/hide some or all chat channels.
Because I want to focus on the game, and not on 13yo's swearing.

And no, I don't care about your mute function where you have to select each individual you want to mute. Just let me mute all of them!

[TempAcc]

..it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

If I remember correctly, he was hired by some sort of Brazilian crime family as a bodyguard. They live in Brazil so he's employed in Brazil. When a Brazilian gang pisses off said crime family, Max has to go kill them because they kidnap one of the family members. He super fucks up and by the end of the game the entire family is dead. Not only does he shoot gangsters, he also kills cops. In fact he mostly kills cops and mercenaries and I think revolutionaries of some kind at one point. The gangsters stop being the main mooks partway through the game.

He shoots foreign people because he's on the run for shooting white people when he lived in New York (the part where you're in a flash back in Brooklyn), and his friend got him a job working for that crime family (but in the end it was some sort of convoluted set up).

So yeah he kills brown people for money. There's also games about killing white people for money. I think you're missing something somewhere. Max is an antihero, an alcoholic, and he's terrible at his job too. His principal ends up being killed because he was drinking on the job. You're supposed to despise him as much if not more than his enemies, because he's a scumbag and a coward, who can't live with the mistakes he made in the past. He's a loser, and he's white, in another country. He gets beaten just for looking like a tourist.

EDIT: He's well intentioned, but throughout the game characters repeatedly tell him to fuck off because they don't want his help, and when he does help, he just ends up making things worse, because all he knows how to do is kill people. And he reminds the player of this in his snide narrations (which are supposed to annoy you). The whole point of the game actually the entire series was to hang a lampshade on that type of protagonist.

Thats the thing though, Brazil isn't exactly "full of brown people". Whoever has actualy been to Brazil knows that you can literally find pretty much every ethnicity depending on what region you visit, from afro-descendants and arabs to many different kind of europeans and even asians (Brazil has one of the largest, if not the largest population of japanese and japanese descendants that live outside of japan).

I know that the OP's post wasn't exactly about the cartoonish ways games depict foreign countries, but the belief that south america is homogenously populated by brown people is an annoying american-based pseudo-fact that games like CoD and media based off comic books (like max payne) like to run with.

[TamerVirus]

unskipable cutscenes

Especially if it's before an aggravating boss

[timferius]

Because I've been plaing the older Metal Gear Solid games:

Unpausable cutscenes

You can't put a 15 minute movie in the middle of the game and not let me pause the bloody thing. I've got a life too you know...

[Darkmere]

Oh hey, I can continue the trend:

Cutscene Incompetence

Yeah, I just mowed through 3 dozen mooks, but those two were scripted to capture me so I guess I surrender.

[dennislp3]

And mostly touching on the above point would be:

Cutscene Inconsistency
In a cutscene everything takes 1 hit to kill, in a cutscene you move in ways you could never dream of moving in the game, etc.

I get that a cutscene and gameplay are totally different...but when the cutscene has a realism so far removed from the game mechanics it just...doesn't work

[scrdest]

And mostly touching on the above point would be:

Cutscene Inconsistency
In a cutscene everything takes 1 hit to kill, in a cutscene you move in ways you could never dream of moving in the game, etc.

I get that a cutscene and gameplay are totally different...but when the cutscene has a realism so far removed from the game mechanics it just...doesn't work

I hate this much better than Incompetence, because it taunts you with how the game could be more enjoyable if the cutscene's done well.

[LoSboccacc]

unskipable cutscenes

Especially if it's before an aggravating boss

I'd also add the opposite: unreplayable cutscenes, they give you an important clue or piece of the story, but you cannot find them salvo restoring a previous save (if that is even possible)

[timferius]

unskipable cutscenes

Especially if it's before an aggravating boss

I'd also add the opposite: unreplayable cutscenes, they give you an important clue or piece of the story, but you cannot find them salvo restoring a previous save (if that is even possible)

Luckily, you tube is your friend here. Because of the Unpausable Cutscenes mentioned above I ran in to this.

[Neonivek]

Cutscene Re-edits

Yeah! That boss was really tough, I had to pull out all the stops... Wait what? You actually defeated me this entire time? What the heck!

Worse yet is when that boss is mandatory to defeat, yet the game will rewrite that battle so that you lost anyway.

Ohh and also

DUMBTARDED protagonists who are your perspective protagonist

Bioshock Infinite... Dumbest hero EVER! It is one thing to put the opening on rails, it is another to absolutely require that WE the players be as stupid as humanly possible in order to make it work (This is why I don't believe the main character of the game is our player character, there is no autonomy behind his actions)